Martiros Manoukian is an Armenian-born contemporary artist whose distinctive visual language brings together painting, mixed media, metallic elements, light, color, and imagination.
Born in Yerevan in 1947, Martiros demonstrated an exceptional ability to paint from an early age. His formal training at the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia gave him a classical foundation, but his artistic path would ultimately move far beyond traditional categories.
Throughout his career, Martiros developed an approach he calls Marmillism — Martiros Millennial-ism. Combining elements of realism, impressionism, painterliness, abstraction, and mixed-media experimentation, his works are characterized by intense color, dimensional surfaces, movement, fantasy, and meticulous detail.
His practice is highly experimental. Watercolor, acrylic, oil, pigments, gold, platinum, metals, and other materials are layered and combined to create compositions that continually change according to light, distance, and perspective.
Human figures, women, flowers, masks, nature, mythology, and imagined worlds recur throughout his work. Rather than remaining within a single genre, Martiros moves between portraiture, abstraction, floral compositions, and surreal visual narratives.
After establishing his career in Armenia, Martiros moved to the United States in 1987. His work later reached audiences across the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Switzerland, France, Russia, and other international markets. His long relationship with Asia included more than fourteen years in Japan and exhibitions throughout the region.
Across decades of experimentation, Martiros has built a visual world entirely his own — one in which reality and fantasy, material and light, precision and spontaneity exist simultaneously.
Mixed Media
40 × 60 in
Unique Original
Trilogy unfolds as a theatrical narrative populated by masked figures and symbolic characters.
At its center are three archetypes — the Schemer, the Sleeper, and the Scholar — surrounded by a constellation of secondary figures that seem to emerge and disappear within the composition.
Through layers of color, form, and character, Martiros transforms the canvas into an imagined stage where heroes, villains, observers, and dreamlike figures coexist. The work reveals itself gradually, inviting the viewer to move between individual details and the larger narrative.
Mixed Media
58 × 38 in
Unique Original
Celestial Passion functions almost as a painting within a painting, filled with concealed figures, gestures, and optical illusions.
Forms appear differently depending on where and how the work is viewed. Faces emerge from abstraction, while two hands reaching toward one another introduce a quiet human tension within the composition.
The work reflects one of the defining characteristics of Martiros’ practice: an image is rarely meant to reveal itself all at once. Meaning develops through observation, perspective, and discovery.
Mixed Media
57 × 39 in
Unique Original
In Grandeur, Martiros transforms the familiar form of a flower into something monumental.
Light, movement, line, color, and texture converge in a composition that feels simultaneously organic and imagined. Petal-like forms appear to open, overlap, and shift, creating a sense of continuous movement across the surface.
The work embodies Martiros’ fascination with nature while demonstrating his ability to move beyond literal representation. What begins as a floral composition becomes an exploration of rhythm, scale, light, and form.
Mixed Media
50 × 64 in
Unique Original
Golden Rejection captures a moment suspended just before contact.
Two masked figures move toward one another, their faces separated by only a narrow space, while intervening hands interrupt the encounter. The composition turns a seemingly intimate moment into a more ambiguous psychological scene shaped by attraction, interruption, and distance.
Against the dark ground, luminous color, metallic detail, and fragmented forms heighten the theatrical quality of the work.
Mixed Media
54 × 34 in
Unique Original
In Supremacy, Martiros transforms the simplicity of a bouquet into an explosive study of color, material, and movement.
Red dominates the composition, interrupted by white, gold, black, and richly layered passages of color. Floral forms expand beyond their natural appearance, becoming almost architectural.
The work reflects Martiros’ refusal to limit himself to a single material or technique. Painting becomes experimentation — an evolving combination of substance, texture, light, and imagination.
Mixed Media
57 × 38 in
Unique Original
Guardians enters the more fantastical side of Martiros’ world.
A group of ethereal figures emerges from a luminous field of color, each possessing an almost otherworldly presence. Their delicate faces contrast with elaborate, wing-like forms and richly layered surfaces surrounding them.
The result sits somewhere between portraiture, mythology, and dream — a recurring territory within Martiros’ artistic universe.
